Americans pay between $500 million and $1 billion annually in taxes to subsidize
cattle grazing on federal public lands across the West, a new study shows.

In their study, "Assessing the Full Cost of the Federal Grazing Program,"
Rockefeller Fellow Karyn Moskowitz and Bureau of Land Management economist Chuck
Romaniello document the vast subsidies that support livestock grazing on public
lands by 23,600 federal permittees in the western United States.

"Taking into account the many direct and indirect federal expenditures
that benefit or compensate for impacts of livestock grazing on federal lands,
the full cost of the federal grazing program to the U.S. Treasury is likely
to approximate $500 million annually," Moskowitz and Romaniello note in
their report. "Considering the many other indirect costs . . . due to resource
damage and impaired opportunities for recreation and other non-commercial land
uses, the full cost to the U.S. public could approach $1 billion annually."

The study was commissioned by the Center for Biological Diversity and five
other conservation groups representing the National Public Lands Grazing Campaign.

"The lack of transparent accounting was the most frustrating thing,"
said Moskowitz, a Rockefeller Fellow at the University of Kentucky. "It
was difficult to get a clear idea of just how much money the government is pumping
into the federal grazing program to keep it going."

Romaniello, an agricultural economist for the BLM in Colorado, said range management
programs administered by the BLM and U.S. Forest Service, which alone lose more
than $100 million, are "just the tip of the iceberg."

"Numerous programs both in and outside the two agencies also bear costs
related to the grazing program," he said. "We could find no system
that adequately accounts for all of these costs."

Among these costs are compensation or mitigation for damages to public resources,
wildlife, watersheds and human health by livestock on public lands.

Taxpayers pay to restore streams fouled by cattle; to fence public campsites
and archaeological sites; to filter out giardia and other parasites that end
up in city water supplies from cattle. They also pay when government trappers
kill mountain lions, coyotes and other predators that threaten cows on the public
range.

The NPLGC groups commissioned the study to get an objective, updated summary
of the costs to the public -- and harm to the environment -- of the federal
livestock grazing program.

The NPLGC seeks to end the federal subsidy system through a voluntary federal
buyout program that would compensate ranchers who relinquish their public lands
grazing permits. The plan is endorsed by more than 120 groups nationwide and
supported by many ranchers.

The NPLGC proposal would compensate federal grazing permittees at $175 per
animal unit month, or AUM, a rate four times market value. The buyout program
would cost $3.3 billion but provide a savings of between $5.7 billion and $9.9
billion.

"There could be one last subsidy to end all future subsidies," said
NPLGC director Andy Kerr. "If we pay ranchers to let go of their permits,
we estimate we would recoup the investment in about seven years."

The Forest Service and BLM combined manage about 320 million acres of public
lands in the western United States. About 258 million acres, or 81 percent,
are grazed by privately owned livestock.

"The agencies have known for years that the grazing fee formula is mathematically
flawed," said Suckling. "The formula keeps the monthly grazing fee
at about five time less than the cost to feed a domestic pet for a month."

Many ranchers and industry supporters contend their operations are in jeopardy
even under the current subsidy system. Yet, more than 50 percent of all public
lands ranchers produce cattle as a second occupation, and federal grazing subsidies
are held by corporations such as Anheuser Busch and billionaires such as Idaho's
J.R. Simplot.

Public lands ranching west of the Mississippi River produces less than 3 percent
of America's beef.

"Even raising the grazing fee to market levels will not cover the real
cost of livestock production on public lands," said George Wuerthner, co-editor
with Mollie Matteson of a new book, Welfare Ranching: The Subsidized Destruction
of the American West. "If we did a full accounting of the ecological
costs -- soil erosion, extirpation of predators, water pollution, endangered
species, spread of weeds, dewatering of rivers for irrigated pasture -- the
price we pay annually to sustain this 19th century relic would be in the billions
of dollars."